Hand Made

In the dining room at the Cyrenians Community on Ferry Road is the original dining table from when the first community house was opened at Broughton Place in 1968. It’s a very large table. Big enough to provide a place for each of the dozen young people who live together. Something like 1500 young people have shared meals around that table down the years. Meals made and eaten together by the community members. It was moved from the original house in Broughton when the Cyrenian Community relocated in 1997. We couldn’t buy a big enough replacement. The tabletop has been decorated with a mosaic of multi-coloured hand prints. Probably not its first or last makeover.

Last Wednesday I went along to the Community house for the Open Day put on by the young people living there. It was very much their event. From the handmade welcome poster on the normally anonymous street door to the cup cakes on the dining table: everything handmade. It was a day to share what they do with neighbours, social workers and anyone locally who cared to find out more.

Nagi, David, Sascha, John, Enza and Vinicius were doing tours of the house. It’s not a show home really, to be honest. The interest is in how generations of young people have benefited from living as part of a conscious community. Back in the dining room one of the newest residents, Max, was brave enough to share his views with the assembled guests. “It’s really good here. We all muck in and give each other a hand. And you end up helping yourself that way”